Azimuthal Asymmetries From Jets Quenched In Fluctuating Backgrounds

TL;DR

This paper studies how fluctuations in the quark-gluon plasma background and the initial hard process distribution lead to azimuthal asymmetries in high momentum hadron spectra, quantified by Fourier coefficients.

Contribution

It introduces a simple energy loss model to estimate azimuthal asymmetries up to v6 caused by background and initial state fluctuations.

Findings

Fluctuations significantly contribute to azimuthal asymmetries.

The model estimates v_n coefficients up to n=6.

Results help interpret jet quenching measurements.

Abstract

High momentum jets and hadrons are important probes for the quark gluon plasma (QGP) formed in nuclear collisions at high energies. We investigate how fluctuations in the background density of the QGP and fluctuations in the spatial distribution of the hard process create azimuthal asymmetries of the high momentum hadron spectrum, described by the Fourier coefficients $v_n$, $n > 0$ . We estimate the coefficients up to $v_6$ in a simple energy loss model tuned to single inclusive hadron suppression.